5th Action For India Forum held at IIT Delhi, made history by bringing Amitabh Kant, architect of Startup India Policy, CEO of NITI Aayog and Sam Pitroda Ex. Chair of National Innovation council and debated on Inclusive Growth. It was great to see Amitabh wasn’t completely taken away by the IT lobbying bodies that is converting our engineers to idli, tshirt, phone sales men. It was brought out how equitable growth is more important for the country to achieve the growth it requires, as 400 million people live below the poverty line.

AFI 16

The event was attended by curated audience of 100 Social Entrepreneurs – non-profit and for-profit and 100 influencers who care about inclusive growth. Titled “Scale up weekend for Social Enterprises – Innovate to Impact” focused on Healthcare, Agriculture, Education, Energy and Livelihood. In depth discussions happened on all of these sectors with actionable outcomes on (i) Recommendations to strengthen Policy Framework (ii) Recommendations to AFI for future action (iii) Recommendations to ecosystem in general All of these were compiled and were presented to the panel of Doers, Government & AFI. A comprehensive list that were presented will be published soon.

AFI Top 10 with Jury

SV Challenge: 25 Social Enterprises were shortlisted and were competing at semi finals and 10 were selected for the finals. Very excited to see that 70% of top 10 were working on Agriculture. Top 10 presented to live audience and jury comprised of Sam Pitrora, Nagaraja Prakasam, Neelam Chibber, Amit Jain, Mahesh. The 4 that won a trip to SV are Swasti Agro, Farms and Farmers, My Scholarship, Uber diagnostics. I ended up investing in Saahas Zero Waste which was the SV winner at AFI 15 ! Hub vision 20/20 – 20 hubs by 2020 We discussed about Regional Hubs can act as catalyst for SEs in

Take grass root innovations to the world. Freshworld – Farm to Home vegetable delivery startup in Bangalore using electric vehicle is powered by vehicle Made in Madurai.

Bring innovation to hub. How Saahas is motivating entreprenurs in Madurai to take up waste management.

Co-create solutions. Rainstock funded by Native Angels Network is working on grey water recycling with the help of RTBI, IIT Chennai and P.hd students of Lady Doak College, Madurai.

We talked about current hubs in Hubli (Deshpande), Nizambad (Kakatia), Madurai (Nativelead) and the upcoming ones in Bhubaneshwar, Varanasi, etc. Top 4 Social Enterprises